From Baltic to Lapland and Murmansk

Cargoes heading to Northern Scandinavia and Russia receive a warm welcome in Lapland's Port of Kemi. The full-service Ajos harbour is the most northern sea port in the EU with year-round shipping lines to major European ports and short, non-congested connections to Sweden, Norway and Russia.
The Port of Kemi is located right in the middle of considerable cargo flows thanks to pulp and paper industrial plants. Nearly 700 vessels call at Kemi each year, the Port is rapidly growing and a huge investment programme is to be completed by 2006. The name of the Port of Kemi will be Lapland's deep-water harbour Ajos, reflecting the great importance of the Port for the whole northern region.

The harbour Kemi is the closest to the Barents Region, which means lower rates and shorter transit kilometers and time. The intermodal shift will be improved and cargo handling will be more efficient after completion of Ajos development. The base for transit transportation opportunities rest on existing regular shipping connections. The Port of Kemi has scheduled weekly sea connections with southern Baltic ports as well as with some in Northern America. Vessels sailing northbound have lots of empty capacity to be filled with transit cargo. As all the necessary cargo handling services and trucking fleet are available in Port area, services can be organised by eg. Bothnia Logistic Centre Ltd in Ajos.

Via the Barents Transport Corridor (BTC) cargo owners and forwarders can reach an exceptionally attractive area with huge future plans. The Kola Peninsula is a home for almost 2 million Russians and is heavily industrialised. The region needs a lot of consumer goods as well as machinery for existing and planned industrial plants in the field of mineral, mining, oil and gas, metals, fertilizers, fishing etc. Within five years fast progress in the Barents area is foreseen and hopefully BTC will develop into one of the major transport corridor in the North.

The Port of Kemi participates in many development activities. One EU part-financed project is InLoC, which will organise an international mid-term conference in Kemi from 20th to 22nd of June 2005. All countries surrounding the Baltic Sea will be represented and UBC Logistics Task Force will have a meeting as well.